Killer jailed for couple's murder first thought to be accident

A man has been jailed for at least 33 years for the murder of a couple whose deaths were wrongly attributed to a car crash.

After a first conviction was quashed on appeal, a Supreme Court jury found Terry Mark Donai guilty of drugging and strangling Pamela and William "Bill" Weightman in their Glen Alpine home in January 2000.

With the Weightmans' adopted son David Weightman, Donai pushed their car, with the bodies in it, over an embankment at Heathcote.

Police and a forensic pathologist missed the fact the Weightmans might have been murdered until David, 20 at the time of the murders, confessed four years later.

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Murdered ... Pam and Bill Weightman.

In sentencing submissions in June, the deputy senior Crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen, SC, said Donai should receive the maximum sentence.

He was motivated only by greed and had shown no remorse, Ms Cunneen said.

But in the NSW Supreme Court this morning, Justice Peter Hidden sentenced Donai to a maximum of 40 years with a non-parole period of 30 years for each offence.

The sentence on the second offence was accumulated upon the first by three years, meaning Donai's total non-parole period will be 33 years, dating from June 16, 2006.

Donai, 45, will be eligible for parole on June 15, 2039. He was 32 at the time of the murders.

In sentencing Donai, Justice Hidden said: "In the sanctity of their home Mr and Mrs Weightman were killed in a brutal manner."

He acknowledged the time it had taken for Donai to be dealt with under the legal system and its affect on Mrs Weightman's sister, Margaret Urwin, in particular.

"I am particularly conscious of the agony she and the family must have suffered waiting so long for this offender to come to justice," he said.

Outside the court, Mrs Urwin's husband, Alan Urwin, said Donai should have got two life sentences, which was the punishment he was given after the first trial.

"The sentence was not appropriate but as I say this should have been handed down over 10 years ago," he said.

"I am asking the Premier for a full and independent investigation into this to determine why NSW Police refused to investigate an obvious double murder, which they left to the family to get evidence to get two murders bought to justice in NSW."

Mr Urwin said the family has had "no explanation whatsoever" for the failure of police to investigate the case at the time.

"For four years we had to do the job for NSW Police. For four years they were telling us that this was a motor vehicle accident, that we’re being paranoid, and get on with our life," he said.

"There was no evidence to suggest this was a motor vehicle accident - all the evidence pointed to a murder."

Outside the court, a visibly shaken Mrs Urwin said she wanted Donai to get two life sentences. "Nothing is going to bring Pam and Bill back ... so you don’t move on, you live with it," she said.

Mrs and Mrs Urwin were convinced the Weightmans met with foul play and had kept up the pressure on their nephew until he had finally confessed to murdering his parents for money.

During the trial, David Weightman said Donai, his friend, had planned to drug the couple with the benzodiazepine Temazepam and then smother them in return for $17,000.

Donai killed Mrs Weightman before asking David to help him strangle Mr Weightman, who struggled to save his life.

David, who pleaded guilty to the double murder, was jailed for 22 years after a court found he suffered from either schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and had used drugs that impaired his judgment and rendered him more susceptible to being under the influence of Donai, who is a decade older.

Ms Cunneen said that in performing the post-mortem examinations, forensic pathologist Allan Cala had mistakenly recorded the autopsy results of a different brain in Mrs Weightman's autopsy records.

Mrs Weightman, 50, and her husband, Bill, 51, were the owners of a child-care centre.

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Victims' advocate Howard Brown said the police investigation "was flawed right from the start".

"This was a crime committed purely for profit for no other reason, and if that doesn’t fall into the worst case category and deserve a life sentence for both murders, I don’t know what we expect of our judicial system any more," Mr Brown said.